1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for reducing battery consumption of a mobile terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for reducing battery consumption by allowing a mobile terminal to perform a wakeup by expiration or update of a timer at a wakeup time.
2. Description of the Related Art
Availability of a mobile terminal that can perform wireless voice communication and other information exchange becomes a necessity in modern life. At an early stage, a mobile terminal has been recognized as portable device that can perform wireless communication. As a technology develops and wireless Internet is introduced, a mobile terminal provides not only a basic function of telephone communication, but it now provides a wide range application, such as games, satellite broadcasting viewing, a remote function using short distance communication, image capturing using a mounted camera module, and schedule management, etc.
With a rapid development of a mobile terminal, a smaller battery is desired while adequate enough to support various function. This requires the capacity of the battery to be increased, and battery consumption needs to be reduced or controlled simultaneously.
Representative functions of a mobile terminal causing additional battery consumption include operations such as call reception, listening music, moving image viewing, a camera function, etc. In addition, battery consumption occurs even in an idle state for detecting a paging message received from a base station. More particularly, a mobile terminal reduces battery consumption by waking up at a page slot during paging of the mobile terminal and receiving Common Air Interface (CAI) messages. Further, a consumption waste occurs whenever the mobile terminal frequently wakes up from a sleep mode. For example, a mobile terminal wakes up from a sleep mode not only at a paging period, but also when a software timer (for example, a timer for measuring battery) expires or is updated, or when an external interrupt (for example, a user's key input, call reception, and the like.) occurs. As a result, a battery consumption waste occurs during these circumstances.
FIG. 1 is a view illustrating typical wakeup modes that occur in a mobile terminal causing a battery consumption of the conventional mobile terminal.
For example, the mobile terminal may perform wakeup every paging period of 470 msec (100), and drives a software timer having periods of 1 second (110) and 2 seconds (120) subsequently. Hence, the mobile terminal performs wakeup every 470 msec (100) from a sleep mode. Further, when a timer 1 (110) expires or is updated in 1 second (1000 msec) and when a timer 2 (120) expires or is updated in 2 seconds (2000 msec), the mobile terminal performs the wakes up at a relevant point.
At this point, since the mobile terminal performs wakeup at a period of 470 msec (100), the mobile terminals performs wakeup for a paging period of 940 msec at a second wakeup point (that is, before 1 second, which is an expiration time of the timer 1 (110), expires), and then performs wakeup for the timer 1 (110) after a short time of 60 msec elapses.
In addition, the mobile terminal performs four times (1880 msec) of wakeups according to a paging period, and then performs wakeup for the timer 2 (120) after a short time of 120 msec elapses (2000 msec).
When the process of waking up from a sleep mode frequently occurs as shown in FIG. 1, the batter consumption of a mobile terminal increases.
Therefore, there is a need to reducing the battery consumption under the above circumstance.